COVID-19 RELIEF: FREE PERIOD PRODUCTS TO MONTANA STUDENTS AFFECTED

Photo by Emmarose Mills

Featuring Claire Mills

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Periods Served!

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"Crescent Montana’s mission is to serve the public interest by reducing disparities in access to health care in rural and Tribal Montana schools, specifically by providing readily available menstrual hygiene products to schools, and access to reproductive health education."

Mission Statement, 2019

Our mission

At Crescent, we believe that Montana students have the right to an education without being hindered by poor reproductive healthcare. Sadly, a growing pool of data has shown that as many as 1 in 5 girls in America has been forced to miss school because they don't have access to menstrual hygiene products (1). This is what is known as Period Poverty and, frankly, it is unacceptable.

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Crescent's mission is to eliminate period poverty in Montana by providing free and readily-available period products to Montana schools, with an emphasis on low income and at-risk communities.

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR FREE BATHROOM DISPENSER PROGRAM

"Crescent empowers young women, valuing both their health and education, and showing them that the two are not mutually exclusive."

Bozeman High School Senior, 2019

"This is incredible!!I really appreciate that you are helping provide menstrual hygiene products and reproductive education to schools. Thank you."

Bozeman High School First-Year, 2019

This program doesn't just affect low income students, though. By making menstrual hygiene products free and available to any student in need, we are eliminating the pervasive stigma that women's hygiene needs are less important than others—after all, we provide free toilet paper to our students.

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Especially during the critical period of adolescence, tackling this stigma is incredibly important. Crescent hopes to show Montana students that they don't need to chose between being comfortable and healthy and getting an education.

Want to Help out too?

Current Projects

To fight period poverty in Montana, Crescent has started it's Bathroom Dispenser Initiative. We are working to partner with Montana middle and high schools by providing and stocking free period product dispensers in women's restrooms. The dispensers are custom designed to be friendly and inviting, with instructions for safe period product use kindly provided by Bridgercare of Bozeman. Currently, we are operating our first dispenser at Bozeman High School under a very generous grant from Bozeman Noon Rotary, with more school partnerships in the works. If you know of a school or community that could benefit from this program, please contact us!